The present invention relates in general to transportation systems and, in particular, to a new and useful transport arrangement utilizing cars having magnets thereon which ride on a stator extending along a roadway and forming an electrical linear motor drive for the car.
Linear motor drives utilize a stator which extends along a roadway. A car for travelling along the roadway carries permanent magnets which interact with the stator for propelling the car along the roadway. There must be sufficiently great congruence between the permanent magnets and the roadway. This is particularly important in cases where relatively large payloads must be moved, such as those which have to be handled in underground mining, in the case of completely preassembled mining frames. The requirement of congruence between the permanent magnets and the stator can be met comparatively easily as long as the roadways are more or less straight, or their curves have long radii.
However, difficulties occur if long cars for carrying mining frames and having correspondingly long permanent magnets integrated into the cars, have to travel on drifts having tight curves with a radius of as little as 2 meters. At such places, the congruence of the stator with the permanent magnets which assures perfect propulsion of the cars can no longer be assured.